The Zoo Revisited/Chapter 4

ALWAYS thought I knew something about crocodiles and alligators. At any rate, I have seen enough of them. But it was reserved for a recent visit to the Zoo to discover that alligators roar and bellow like lions and bisons. I was not merely astonished, I was utterly confounded and “metagrobolised.”

No work on natural history, no book of travels, had prepared me for the voices of these great reptiles. I always thought they were mute, except for that queer, rattling, jaw-snapping noise that crocodiles—those of the Ganges at any rate—make gregariously about sundown. Indeed, somewhere in one of my books I have elaborately dwelt upon the added horror of their voicelessness, and imagined that it increased their terrors that they should be tongueless. A mute monster, it always seems to me, must be more dreadful than a vociferous one. Let that be as it may, the alligator is not voiceless. On the contrary, the lion itself can scarcely give it points in roaring, while there is added to its utterance a curious something, between a bellow and a boom, which makes it one of the most remarkable and awe-inspiring in nature.

I was in the Reptile House. Ranged round the walls are the silent snakes and speechless lizards, some of the turtle-folk, and mudfish. In the centre are tanks with alligators, crocodiles, and terrapin. Everything was as quiet as it usually is in this habitation of the mute. There was not a sound of animal life. Now and then, perhaps, a suspicion of it in the ripple of water when a crocodile shifted its position, or the grating of gravel when a boa drew its rings closer together or moved.

Visitors to this room are as a rule quieter than elsewhere. Perhaps it is the effect of the chilling transition from the noisy Lion House across the way to this tranquil abode of the speechless, that subdues them. They have very little to say for themselves, and stay only a short time. Snakes that will not move, and crocodiles that will not even wink, are not conducive to much enthusiasm of spirits or variation in remark. So when each has said “Oh, look here!” and “How horrid!” conversation expires, and the visitor goes out of the tropically-heated room into the fresh air without more ado.

It was high noon, and in the dwelling-place of the serpent and crocodile all was hushed. I could hear the snake's dead and dry scales coming crisply off as the python rubbed its head carefully and slowly against the straw or on its own folds. Suddenly! there was a loud snort, very gruff and deep-lunged, as if the escape valve of an engine had been opened for the fraction of a second. I started and turned round. Again and again that sudden puff! Through the window I saw the keeper of the house. He had got up and was coming inside. Was something going to burst? the pipes that heated the place, perhaps? I went in the direction of the noise, when lo! right at my feet, as I was passing the centre tank, came a roar like a lion's, deep-chested and reverberating. I was absolutely petrified, and stared into the tank. And then all four alligators commenced together, and for a little more than a minute the Reptile House was like Libya by night “with all her lions up,” and as full of uproar of just as majestic a kind as when the great carnivora are being fed. People outside hurried in, thinking there were “more lions or tigers” to see, but when they got into the house all was quiet again. Once or twice, all by itself, the Chinese alligator let off steam, but the concert was over.

“And you may not hear it again for six months,” said the keeper. “There are officials who have been in the Gardens a dozen years and they have never chanced to be in here while the alligators were roaring.”

I was glad I had heard it, and indeed I can remember no other incident of natural history that has ever in my life given me so much surprise and pleasure as this totally unexpected development by alligators of “a hollow voice of roaring.”

“Now, sir,” said I, turning to the largest of the alligators, “what do you mean by this?”

“By what?”

“By all this roaring and bellowing, of course.”

“Why, we always do it at home in the Mississippi, and in Florida, and wherever we are. It's our nature to.”

“But how is it I have never read of this talent of yours in books about the Mississippi alligators?”

“Isn't that your fault or the book's fault?” asked the wily saurian; “it's not mine. I've never made any secret of my voice. I'm proud of it!”

“It's just tremendous,” I said in sincere enthusiasm.

“I know it is. Did you see the water bubble up on either side of me with the vibration, and begin to wash round this slop-basin?”

“I did.”

“Well, you ask the keeper there if it's not true that we can raise a regular wave just as if we were all swimming round; and what's more, if you're here when we're at it in real earnest (we were not to-day) you can put your hand on any seat in the house, and you'll find it vibrating. Isn't that so, keeper?”

“That's so,” said he.

“And the water in the glass tanks all round the house will be set vibrating too. The snakes all wake up.”

And whether true or not, it was a fact that nearly all snakes that had been quite quiet before were now moving.

“And how do you do it?”

“Simply enough. I just fill myself with air. You saw that I was puffed out, not my sides only but my neck and cheeks? Well, as we fill we rise to the surface, and when we are on the top we begin to blow the air out of us again. As it goes, we sink, and when our mouths reach water-level we have to stop. That's all.”

“Then you can't blow under water?”

“No, not any more than we can keep our eyes open.”

“But you're not blind under water, are you?”

“Blind? No. But all the same, we cannot see as well as when we're out of the water. Sometimes we shut our eyes and “go for” what we want “blind,” but as a rule we only draw this membrane (and the alligator drew a filmy membrane over its eye, giving it a horribly dead look) over the eyes, and we can see through it against the light quite well enough to tell us which way to go to take hold of what we wish to.”

“But I have seen you here in this tank find out that something is coming in your direction, when it has been impossible for you to see it.”

“Yes, because our first information of anything moving in the water comes from the water itself. We feel the movement as you might feel wind blowing on your cheek, and, like you, we can tell the direction in which the movement is setting, and we act accordingly. Go and watch the little crocodiles in the other tanks, and you'll soon see how sensitive they are to the approach of anything, even though they cannot possibly see it, and how quickly they all wake up to the fact that some 'foreign body' has come into, or fallen into, their tank.”

“Then you swim about without seeing where you are going?”

“Dear me, no! We swim with our eyes above water and our noses. Our eyes, you see, are raised on bumps above the level of our faces, and so are our nostrils, and when we swim we keep both above water; and I don't mind telling you that when you see a knob coming along the water, and two little knobs following it, you can tell how big the alligator is that is after you. Every inch between the first knob, which is my nose, and the other two knobs, which are my eyes, means a foot of body under water. There's something over seven inches, you see, between my nose and my eyes, and if you will look at the rest of me you will find that I am about eight feet long.”

“Thank you. I am sure it will afford me much gratification when an alligator is after me to stop and calculate its length. Excuse my asking, you are an alligator, are you not?”

“Certainly. What else could you take me for?”

“Well, the line is drawn so fine nowadays between alligators and crocodiles that I was not quite sure.”

“Humph!” said my friend. “Look under that big stump. Do you see that long sharp-pointed nose sticking out? That's a crocodile. If he dared to come out, I'd bite him in two. But he daren't. And there's another crocodile under the other stump—and he had better stay there.”

“But there is a 'crocodile' in the other tank that has got a square head and blunt nose, like you. I hope I don't seem personal?”

“Not a bit, my dear sir. You put your foot down into the tank, and I'll show you what my idea of being 'personal' is. But, pleasantry apart, I am sorry to hear what you say. We alligators always thought that the blunt nose was peculiar to ourselves. I must ask Mr. Bartlett about that. It is irregular.”

“The crocodiles, I noticed, didn't bellow or roar.”

“They never do; they make a kind of noise of their own, but it is not worth mentioning. Even that little Chinese alligator makes a better noise than the biggest crocodile.”

“The Chinese alligator! I thought your family was confined to the New World.”

“So did everybody else till very lately; but you have only to look into the other tank to see that everybody has been wrong all along. Besides, you heard him helping us to roar, didn't you?”

“Oh, yes; he is the person who was letting off steam, and shutting it off again so suddenly. And he was roaring too like you.”

“I beg your pardon. The Chinaman only snorts. The one that roared was another stranger—an African. He roars very creditably indeed. And, by the way, do you think you could put him into our tank?—just in a friendly way, you know. Well—good-bye.”